Wikipedia

Skull emoji

The skull emoji (U+1F480 💀 SKULL) is an emoji depicting a human skull. It was added to Unicode's Emoticon block in October 2010. Originally representing death or goth subculture, the emoji grew to represent a wide range of emotions by the early 2020s, including joy, laughter, "I'm dead from laughter"[1], and embarrassment. It is especially popular among members of Generation Z and Generation Alpha.

Skull emoji as it appeared in Google's Noto Project

Development

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An emoji depicting a skull was originally included in the proprietary emoji sets from SoftBank Mobile and au by KDDI. Using these sets as a source,[2] the Unicode Consortium included the skull emoji in their Unicode 6.0 standard, released in October 2010.[3] Prior to that, the skull emoji was available for iPhone users in Japan, initially using a specific Private Use Area for compatibility with SoftBank's set.[4] Following the discovery that installing Japanese apps unlocked the emoji keyboard, Apple released emoji support worldwide in 2011.[5]

Evolution of meaning and usage

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Throughout the 2010s, the skull emoji retained its original meaning, symbolizing death or goth subculture.[6][7] In 2016, Wired reported that people were more likely to use the skull emoji when they posted online about their phones being broken, signifying that they are "socially dead".[8] The emoji had limited popularity, ranking 92nd among the most used emojis on Twitter in 2015.[9] It reached the top 10 in the United States by 2019, but remained outside the top 50 in other countries.[10]

In the early 2020s, the skull emoji was popularized by Generation Z who started using it as a replacement for the phrases "I'm dead" or "I'm dying" – short for "I'm dying of laughter" – to express joy or happiness,[11] as well as laughter.[12] They viewed Face with Tears of Joy emoji, the emoji previously used to convey these emotions, as "uncool",[13] due to its association with older generations.[12] Before this meaning of the skull emoji became popular, in 2015, U+1F47B 👻 GHOST was used instead.[14] Over time, the skull emoji has evolved to represent a wide range of emotions,[15] including embarrassment.[16]

Reception

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Adam Aleksic of The Washington Post viewed the skull emoji as a symbol that represents humor or irony and believed that it became a punctuation mark. Comparing the emoji to a tone tag, he wrote: "Punctuating the text with a skull lightens the tone and signals humility".[17]

Kayleigh Dray of Stylist thought the popularization of the skull emoji was related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the "dystopian pandemic nightmare" it resulted in. "The laugh-cry emoji has died a sad little death and been replaced with an ever-so-appropriate skull", wrote the journalist.[18]

Encoding

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Character information
Preview💀
Unicode name SKULL
Encodingsdecimalhex
Unicode128128U+1F480
UTF-8240 159 146 128F0 9F 92 80
UTF-1655357 56448D83D DC80
GB 18030148 57 214 5094 39 D6 32
Numeric character reference💀💀
Shift JIS (au by KDDI)[19]246 209F6 D1
Shift JIS (SoftBank 3G)[19]247 92F7 5C
7-bit JIS (au by KDDI)[2]118 8376 53
Emoji shortcode[20]:skull:
Google name (pre-Unicode)[21]SKULL
CLDR text-to-speech name[22]skull
Google substitute string[21][どくろ]

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ "💀 Skull Emoji: Meaning & Usage". EmojiTerra. 2017-04-19. Retrieved 2026-04-03.
  2. 1 2 Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter. "Emoji Symbols: Background Data—Background data for Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols" (PDF). UTC L2/10-132. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 15, 2019.
  3. ↑ "💀 Skull Emoji". Emojipedia. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  4. ↑ "🍏 Apple Emoji List — Emojis for iPhone, iPad and macOS [Updated: 2024]". Emojipedia. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  5. ↑ Cocozza, Paula (November 17, 2015). "Crying with laughter: how we learned how to speak emoji". The Guardian. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  6. ↑ Medley, Lorenza (August 28, 2022). "Get to Know Gen Z". Wisconsin State Journal. p. D8. Retrieved February 14, 2025 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ Kelati, Haben (January 31, 2022). "New emoji appear every year, but where do they come from?". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  8. ↑ Thompson, Clive (April 19, 2016). "The Emoji Is the Birth of a New Type of Language (No Joke)". Wired. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  9. ↑ Chalabi, Mona (June 5, 2014). "The 100 Most-Used Emojis". FiveThirtyEight. Archived from the original on December 16, 2018. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  10. ↑ Brown, Dalvin (September 17, 2019). "Happy World Emoji Day! These are the top 10 icons used this year on Facemoji". USA Today. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
  11. ↑ Piazza, Jake; Khan, Melina; Capoot, Ashley (October 17, 2023). "How Gen Z uses technology — flip phones, digital cameras, voice memos". CNBC. Retrieved February 25, 2025.
  12. 1 2 Yurieff, Kaya (February 14, 2021). "Sorry, millennials. The 😂 emoji isn't cool anymore". CNN. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  13. ↑ Parkinson, Hannah Jane (July 15, 2023). "Once sneered at, it seems emojis are having the last laugh". The Guardian. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  14. ↑ Lange, Maggie (October 26, 2015). "The Ghost Emoji Is Perfect". GQ. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
  15. ↑ Lovejoy, Ben (December 12, 2024). "These emoji and acronyms are no longer cool, says study". 9to5Mac. Retrieved March 17, 2025.
  16. ↑ Johnson, Dave (August 23, 2023). "A List of Common Emoji Meanings". Alphr. Retrieved March 17, 2025.
  17. ↑ Aleksic, Adam (May 15, 2024). "Gen Z's new punctuation". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  18. ↑ Dray, Kayleigh (February 19, 2021). "The sad death of the laugh-cry emoji (and why it bothers us so much, really)". Stylist. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  19. 1 2 Unicode Consortium. "Emoji Sources". Unicode Character Database.
  20. ↑ JoyPixels. "Emoji Alpha Codes". Emoji Toolkit. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved April 24, 2020.
  21. 1 2 Android Open Source Project (2009). "GMoji Raw". Skia Emoji. Archived from the original on October 3, 2020. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
  22. ↑ Unicode, Inc. "Annotations". Common Locale Data Repository. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
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